September 2030

Snowflakes

We start walking the next morning without a word. Brandon hasn't mentioned the nights event, nor given me a judgmental look like I thought he would. When I woke up in the early morning he still had his muscular arms around me, protecting me from myself. The one thing that shocked me the most wasn't the fact that he embraced me, but that he did it after I tried to take his like. His life. Not just hurt him.

I don't mention the night either. Some things are better untold for a while. Yea, for a while. In the future. It seems like I've decided to let him come with me.

The weather hasn't changed. The gray clouds cover the entire sky, refusing to let even the smallest sun rays through. Since we started to walk the already scarce vegetation has disappeared at a steady pace. The higher up, the less bushes and trees. Now, there's only ankle high bushes with sharp branches. But I do have a better view from up here. Obviously. The dark mountains continue for as long as I can see, making the horizon edgy and rough. I turn and start walking again, we don't have time to stop.

Suddenly, a tiny snowflake swirls through the air in front of me, and I can't help but stare. I haven't seen snow falling ever in my life before this. The snowflake is just a small piece of white to the gray and stony mountainside, but it seems to fill my entire sight. I stop, mesmerized.
"What?" Branson asks behind me.
He stops, panting hard.
"It's snowing."
It takes a while before he answers with a whisper. Maybe he's looking up towards the sky, trying to identify the rare sight.
"Oh. Yeah it is."
The at first light snowfall gets heavier fast, and in a second we're standing on an entirely white mountainside. I bend down and scoop up some of the snow in my bare hand before slowly letting it fall down towards the ground again. It's very soft. My fingers are already red from the cold and I put them in my armpits, trying to warm them. I don't know what else to do, except from putting on more clothes. But that I don't have. It's not like I'm used to snow. I've read about it, but not a lot.

I start walking again, my feet slipping backwards on the cold ground for each step. It was stupid of me to not even consider to prepare for colder weather. It never even occurred to me that it would snow, since it's always warm. We must be very high up. I don't have any tech to check our current position since it all can be tracked, but I'm pretty good at estimating. I glance down, trying to see the lake we passed yesterday to see how far we got, but the heavy snowfall makes my sight blurry, and I give up after a while. I don't really need to see anything to know that we're not far from the passage we're going to walk through.

I shiver, my feet are unusually numb and terribly cold from the snow that keeps getting deeper and deeper, and my bare hands are red and frozen. The snowfall gets heavier for each minute passing and I can barely move forward because of my muscles being stiff and the ground slippery.

Seems like not even years of training could teach me to not be ignorant and plan ahead for things like this.

Brandon seems to read my thoughts, and mumbles with a weak and tired laugh:
"Always expect the unexpected".